Blender: Beyond Mouse and Keyboard

Summary

Hjalti playing with the sculpting mockup. Multi-touch interfaces like tablets have been common for years, but only recently thanks to increased processing power, have they started to serve as primary computing devices. To support Blender’s mission of making 3D technology accessible to everyone, it’s important to fully embrace these platforms. Some of these devices include Apple iPad, Microsoft Surface, Huawei MatePad, and the Wacom MovinkPad, among others. The idea is to bring the full power of Blender to these devices. This requires adapting to platform-specific paradigms, but also to offer more task-oriented user interfaces with reduced information density. This will be achieved by extending existing input methods, and improving workspaces and application templates, running on top of a regular Blender build. The initial platform where this idea will be tested is the Apple iPad Pro with Apple Pencil, followed by Android and other graphic tablets in the future. While standalone tablets are the primary target, the core design principles apply across all platforms. This means that any UI/UX improvements will immediately benefit regular tablet users, even as Blender is being ported to run natively on the targeted devices. Design Overview This is a breakdown of product design considerations taken into account when thinking about “what is Blender on a tablet”. Audience – Who is it for? The audience is “Blender users”. There is no distinction between desktop or tablet users, the same way mouse/keyboard and graphic tablet users are treated equally. Therefore, there is no specific intention of simplifying or tailoring Blender to appeal to an audience that might not be familiar with Blender or 3D. The intention is to make Blender fully accessible for users working with those devices, for example: Artists that need a pen-device for specialized tasks (painting, sculpting, 2D animation). Artists that have tablets as their main device. Artists that need Blender on-the-go. While ...